The good news about the Mets is… great news. Amazin’ news, you might say.

Fifty games in, they’re 33-17 and if it weren’t such a deep organization, they’d be the walking wounded.

Starting off with Pedro and Sanchez on the DL and rolling into DL stints by El Duque, Alou, Green and Valentin… and Beltran’s tired legs, an occasional expected ding or two on Paulie, quick scares to Reyes and Gomez… Mota down for fifty games on his, uh, drug issue…

…with long long slumps by Delgado and Wright, no less…

And they’re 33-17. Nearly two wins for every loss, the hallmark of baseball success.

The only thing you could ask for more as a Mets fan would be a thing that the Mets have little control over… a Yankees-esque collapse by the Braves, two or three weeks ago. But you can’t have everything.

Life is good for the Mets… but there’s room for improvement.

Happily, a lot of that improvement is hopefully going to come in the return from the DL of three starting position players and a starting pitcher who, when healthy, can carry a team every fifth or sixth day. And the possible return of a lights-out middle reliever as well!

But every team gets 25 roster spots and… even if you’re the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball, you’re still going to get to places where a game here or a game there is going to come down NOT to the star players… but to the contributions of end-of-bench guys and the last relief pitcher available in a long ballgame or a long week.

Case in point, the twelve-inning gem against the Giants last night.

If Schoenweis had blown up just a little little little bit more, that walk, those balks and that slam don’t mean a damn. If Newhan or Johnson had been able to look like better pinch-hitting options than El Duque in a few key situations, maybe the Mets wouldn’t have had to exhaust themselves to get the W.

Right now, of course, the Mets have what they have. All sorts of guys are down, Pelfrey and Humber are a half-a-season or more away, Vargas is a long term project if he’s anything at all, Milledge is still coming back from an injury that the press seems to believe is actually his ill-conceived rap project and… et cetera, et cetera.

As the cavalry returns from the disabled list, however, there will be hard choices to be made that a lot of fans will probably say “Ah, who cares, its the last guy off the bench? Delgado is on fire! Reyes is on fire!” to but… will determine the wins or losses that do or do not get the Mets the division. Or the wild card. Or home-field in the NL playoffs.

The National Pasttime isn’t just a game of inches… it’s THE game of inches. One pinch-hit, one bad inning from the last-option reliever when the rest of the ‘pen can’t throw anymore without risking injury… these are the things that decide games.

So, just for a minute, let’s play a game.

Lets say that by some wonderful miracle, the Mets have everyone back on… oh… August 14th. Everybody who could possibly be expected to play this season for the Mets is healthy, even Sanchez for the sake of the arguement.

The Mets are up three games on the Braves, four on the Phils, five on the Marlins and five-hundred-and-eighty-seven on the Nats and… oh… the Braves ARE the wild-card leader, just to add a little zest to the proceeding.

So… Martinez, Glavine, El Duque, Perez and Maine are your starting rotation

Reyes, LoDuca, Beltran, Delgado, Wright, Alou, Green, Valentin are your field eight.

Castro and Chavez certainly aren’t going anywhere and neither will Easley at this point and… we’ll assume that Franco’s bones haven’t turned to dust by that point.

We’ll assume Sosa proved himself enough to be the long man/sixth starter for when they wanna buy Pete and extra day rest. We’ll assume Wagner’s still closing, of course, Feliciano, Heilman, Smith unless he burns out completely… Mota if he stays clean and… Chavez if he’s a real quick healer.

Everyone agreed to that line-up?

Hell, let’s even say Chavez isn’t healthy. Then we’re at 23 guys.

One final bullpen guy, one final bat off the bench.

NOT throwaway positions. Dudes deciding close games more frequently than we’d probably ever like to admit.

Who do you choose?

More importantly, who will the set-in-their-ways good-veteran-team-player Willie and Omar choose to be those last two guys who are probably going to be, between them, deciding a win or a loss every nine or ten games?

Hitters:

David Newhan? Can we all agree at this point that if everyone were healthy, he wouldn’t even be playing in New Orleans? I would seriously rather see Ollie Perez pinch-hitting than Davey Gravey. Pinch-hit Ollie Perez and David Newhan ten times, I’ll put a dollar on Ollie getting more hits in that span. Not to mention that if Easley is on the bench again, anything Newhan can do defensively, Easley can do at least roughly as well.

Ben Johnson? A limited sample set, yes, but he sure looked lost against the Giants and his major league stats thus far bespeak pretty much nothing useful. If he’s just eating a spot until Alou or Green (or Milledge, really) is healthy, I mean, it’s fine? But I see nothing out of this guy.

Ricky Ledee? Please no. Please? No. No. The Lima Time of journeyman outfielders.

Gotay? Dude can certainly play any infield position and… I’d certainly believe him more competent at roping a single in the late innings than any of the three above but… his offensive ceiling is pretty low.

Gomez? Oh man, this guy is gonna be good in a little while. He’s still green as hell, though, and is so full of enthusiasm that he’s… swinging like young Jose Reyes as much as running like him and… has already over-run himself into a minor tweak to his leg.

Milledge? Total question mark. Talent ceiling through the roof but… will he be healthy and will the Mets ever figure out how to handle his attitude properly?

Pitchers:

Scho? Are you kidding me? Really? You even thought about this guy? I have to believe that when the Mets get down to the tough-going, they’re gonna realize that it is worth all those millions to NOT have Schoenweis pitch for them in any situation, ever, even to just save other arms in lefty-lefty situations. I have to believe that you don’t give up three or four wins in the stretch just so that you’re “spending your money”. The Mets have the bread to not make this mistake, right? Right.

Sele? See all that stuff I wrote about Sele? Omit the things about the lefty-lefty match-ups and… yeah. I would rather call up Pelfrey or Humber for long relief than keep this guy around another day. All the money in the world can’t get you back three or four losses owed to poor roster management.

Vargas? A… project. A… project for another year. Maybe when someone goes down in ‘09, he’ll be ready to step up and do the Sosa thing. Not now, not soon.

Humber? Could turn out great down the road. At least a year away.

Pelfrey? Right now, no way no how. Might turn things around and be a useful spacefiller for fifth starter/long-reliever roles before the August 31st roster deadline but ultimately a dude ain’t counting on it. Will probably be next year what he was supposed to be next year after a little more time developing his… non-fastball pitches a little.

Park? If the wolves aren’t full after we’ve fed Sele and Show and Newhan to them, maybe Park could fill their little bellies? I mean, really. All four of them to the Yankees right now for Cano. Cano’d be nice to hold down in Nalins in case Easley or Gotay get hurt… and the Yanks might be desperate enough to do it.

Burgos? A young capable-but-not-perfect hurler who I wouldn’t trust all the time but could definitely get his confidence back in long games and mop-up time.

…

I mean, you know my choices from the above. I don’t want Sele or Scho or Newhan anywhere near this roster, even now. I want Milledge to come back and be magically a team players. I… probably want Gomez to be further along than he actually is.

But I could well live with Gotay or Gomez (or a healthy Milledge) as that last guy off the bench and if Sanchez never comes back in ‘08, Burgos is so logical a choice that it’s probably too obvious.

Personally, I wonder how much Franco has left in the tank and would love for him to retire and become an instant coach tomorrow and keep both Gotay and Gomez and… start training Milledge to split time at second down in New Orleans…

But even I realize there’s no talking these guys out of Grandpa Hits-A-Little quite yet.

I just… don’t wanna see my beloved Mets tie one hand behind their backs by getting into the 12th of a pivotal game and they’ve got… Sele and Newhan and Schoenweis as their final hopes.

That is a bad bad place to be for a team with deserved World Series dreams.

My question is… what do you guys (and a few girls) think?

EDIT: Looking at the roster as it stands on May 31st… the world is not going to end if you keep Sele and Johnson around until the DL thins out and replaces them. They’re acceptable short-term stop-gaps.

But even leaving Show and Newhan on the roster so as to TEMPT Willie to use them is just… tragic… especially when you could replace Show with Burgos and Newhan with… anything, really. DeFelice, Alomar, a turnip with a face drawn on it, anything.